Here is SOLDIER THROUGH TIME, by popular request. Thanks for voting! I hope you like it, and PLEASE REVIEW!
"Hey, there it is!" cried one of the sailors, throwing the dark green cap that identified him as a earthbender high into the air. Other sailors took up the cry, abandoning their posts to crowd the railings of the destroyer, shouting and sending blasts of their respective elements into the air.
"Land ho!" cried a waterbender, spraying salt water up like a geyser.
"Leave, here we come!" gleefully shouted a nonbender, and the throngs of young sailors of the United Forces took up the chant.
"Leave, here we come! Leave, here we come!"
The celebratory cries reached Private Iroh at his post, doing maintenance on his own cannon, sooty from his fireblasts. Having a general revulsion to all things dirty and an obsession with keeping his uniform looking razor sharp, Iroh had put the task off for as long as he could, but now, here he was, in his rattiest clothes, scraping off residue with a stiff metal brush and wincing as each unescapable puff of soot settled on his face and clothes.
"Hey, your high fieriness, we're arriving at Yue Bay port." Iroh snapped to attention, turning to face his commander. Bumi was grinning like he did whenever he used Iroh's status to poke fun at the young private under his command.
Hurriedly looking around, Iroh hissed. "That's supposed to be a secret!"
"Oh, yeah, the royal incognito thing. Well, princey-boy, we're about to pull into port and…"
A war whoop, a celebratory blast of fire, and a faint coating of soot as the young private rushed for the railing were his only answers.
Disgruntled, Bumi tried to brush off the soot and muttered. "I had hoped someone of your bloodline would treat their commander with more HONOR."
Iroh tried in vain to make his way to the railing, to catch a glimpse of the port, but the crowd was as impenetrable as rock, and tossed him like a raging sea. Homesickness that had glowed like embers within him burst into rampant flames. "Hey, let me see! I've got family out there!"
Looking for another place to look out, his golden eyes lit up as they locked on the watchtower of the ship. Breaking from the crowd, Iroh raced up flight after flight of stairs, his legs burning. Pushing open the final trapdoor, he went out on the look-out station. The sea breeze was fresh and salty, and fanned the fire in his blood and in his heart. Republic City could clearly be seen from his vantage point, and he rushed to the railing to get a better view. A handful of other sailors had shared this idea, and were taking turns around the spyglass.
"I can see my wife!" shouted an earthbender, his huge fingers gripping the spyglass in excitement, "I can see her! Hey, Michi!"
"She can't hear you." Another earthbender rolled her eyes, taking her turn at the telescope. "By Bosco, this is a great spyglass. Quality glass work in the lenses. I can tell."
A waterbender woman shoved her away. "I don't care what kind of workmanship it is. As long as I can see my son and know that slimy eel-crab of an ex husband of mine hasn't kept him from seeing me come in, I'm good."
"Please, can I have a turn?" Asked Iroh politely.
"No." said the waterbender, scowling through the glass at her ex husband. Iroh's eyes narrowed as he debated using what his mother would call "aggressive negotiations" , but the male earthbender intervened. "Oh, give the kid a chance to see his folks."
Nodding his thanks to the man, Iroh took the spyglass from the angry waterbender. Swiveling the powerful lenses, he focused in on the moderate crowd awaiting on the dock, searching for the one face he knew would be there for him, the face of the one who had stood by him through his fiery teenage years, lack of a father, and his decision to fight to make the world a better place.
The scar made him recognizable.
"Grandfather!" the cry was wrenched from his lips by a joy that began to rage, lighting up his smile. He hungrily drank in the sight of his greatest father figure, a man he loved dearly, and who had loved him back through all his worst moments. The former Firelord's hair was gray, but he stood tall, his eyes scanning the horizon, eating fire flakes. He offered some to the woman with steel gray bangs seated in the wheel chair beside him. Iroh's smile dimmed as he saw how much frailer his grandmother had become during the nine months he had been at sea, before making a weak attempt to laugh it off.
"When Grandmother sees me come off the ship covered in soot, she wouldn't hug me if I had been gone a hundred years!"
"A neat freak, like you?" smiled the female earthbender, who worked near his post and was familiar with his now infamous quirk.
Iroh scowled at her. The waterbender scowled too and asked impatiently. "Done now?"
"Wait." Iroh peered back into the spyglass and watched his grandfather offer his wife some fire flakes, which she was now crunching. A hand reached out to take a few, but the former Firelady batted it away, and told the offender in no uncertain terms to go and get her own damn fireflakes. Scarcely believing his eyes, Iroh looked up into the bespectacled face of the ever busy Firelord Izumi herself, who had taken off at least two days from her duties in the capital to dress like a commoner of Republic City in order to see her son come home. When he was a troublesome teenager, there had been times when Iroh had firmly believed that his mother didn't love him very much. But as Izumi looked straight into his spyglass and pointed out his exact ship to her father, Iroh was struck by how much the Firelord did love her son.
"Alright, you've had long enough." The waterbender woman shoved Iroh out of his reverie and away from the spyglass. Suddenly deprived of the sight of his family, Iroh's loneliness blazed up.
"Please, just one last look!"
"No."
"Please!"
"NO."
Several minutes passed, and Iroh tried again.
"I…"
"I told you NO, damn it!"
"You're not the only one who misses their family!"
And with that, Iroh pushed the woman aside and madly looked for them on the dock. Focusing on his Grandfather's face, he grinned when the graying man looked directly in the lenses and smiled.
It would be a long time before he saw that face smile at him again.
"You blubbering turtle-seal!" a powerful, anger fueled blast of water for the woman's canteen pushed him like a wave to the edge of the railing. Choking on water and shock, he tried to stand, but another blast pushed him back.
It pushed him back a little too far.
Iroh could feel his stomach swoop as he tumbled headfirst over the railing and plummeted toward the deck. He could feel the air whistling past him, and he wished desperately that Avatar Aang, that kind and fun friend of his grandfather, was here to blast him upwards.
I will not die here. Not this close to home. Not when his mother stopped the affairs of the country to welcome him, not when his fierce grandmother sat tall and proud in her wheel chair, no longer having the strength to walk. Not when his Grandfather, the man who had loved him like a son and more, was on that dock, smiling, smiling at him.
I WILL NOT DIE HERE!
Using that determination as fuel, he kicked out a fire blast, propelling himself away from the ship, kicking and kicking again until he was over open water. He was falling like a shooting star, and he would burst on contact with the water if he didn't slow himself down. Flipping in midair, he blasted himself upward, then continued falling. The waves were getting closer. Blast, shoot up a few feet, fall. His flames were tinged blue with fear. Blast. The fire sputtered and steamed as it hit the water, but Iroh hit the waves with such force, he had no sense to sputter. He had no idea how long it had been when he opened his eyes and saw the underwater world tinged blue, the water glowing. He kicked up for air, gasping. His ship was nowhere to be seen. He yelled for help, looked for the dock, for Republic City, for his Grandfather smiling, waiting for him. He blasted flames to the sky.
An answering blast came from an approaching ship. Iroh blasted frantically. Water was not his element. Flames answered, and the ship pulled nearer. As it did, Iroh gaped. This ship did not have the symbolic features his mother had drilled into his memory. No golden dragons for figure heads. No Earth Kingdom insignia on the stern, no Water Tribe symbol on the bulking black hull. This was not his ship. This was a ship straight out of his history scrolls, out of a time of which he had heard only from his grandfather's stories.
The ship stopped, and a small riverboat steamed toward him. The fearsome masks and red and black armor shocked Iroh like lighting. His limbs when numb, and he forgot to swim.
I'm hallucinating. I must be on cactus juice.
"If you run him over, Jee, I will ban music night."
That voice, so like his own, but harsh, abrasive.
It can't be.
Iroh the second, Heir to the Flaming Throne, looked into the glowering, scarred face of the banished Prince Zuko.
Finally, I got this typed out. Thank you to everyone who participated in my poll. I hope this first chapter lives up to your expectations. PLEASE REVIEW!
-Ariolfo